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ESP, and the Assault on Rationality

David Helfand is the chairman of the astronomy department at Columbia University and president of Quest University Canada. He is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Updated January 7, 2011, 6:32 PM

The article on precognition by Prof. Daryl Bem has raised anew questions regarding the peer-review process in science. This recurring attack on an essential element of modern research should be seen for what it is: an assault on science and rationality.

A peer-reviewed article must contain sufficient information for another scientist to replicate the experiments. The ESP study fails this test.

Does any incorrect information ever enter the scientific literature? Of course. This is wholly unsurprising. Science, and its peer review process, are human enterprises and, as such, are subject to error. Peer review, however, means that three (or more) errors have to occur in the same case -- by the author, the reviewer(s) and the editor -- for a faulty result to reach the literature. The process thus provides at least two more chances at correction than for most of what appears in print or on the Internet.

Furthermore, science contains a powerful self-correcting mechanism in which the literature also plays a central role: replication. A properly refereed and edited article must contain sufficient information for another scientist to replicate the experiments described. A result -- especially one of this importance -- must recur several times in tests by independent and skeptical researchers to gain scientific credibility. I have little doubt that Professor Bem's experiments will fail this test. Science, however, will have passed.

If the memos describing the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the rantings of Senator Jim Inhofe on climate change, and the triple-A ratings of collateralized debt obligations had all been subjected to rigorous and impartial peer review, we might all just be a little better off today. Scientific peer review is not the biggest of our problems.

Some have questioned whether ESP is even amenable to scientific inquiry. If it is not, of course, this whole controversy is irrelevant; if psi phenomena lie outside the material realm and manifest themselves through processes untestable by science, we must grant them the same exalted status as belief in the Pastafarian Flying Spaghetti Monster.